Friday in CE: Our First Look at Acer's ChromeOS Tablet Was a Mistake

The annual Bett show in London brought a lot of cool news to the industry, including the Google laptops for education that are in danger of falling behind Microsofts educational Windows 10 laptops soon. It also brought the first look at a world-first Acer branded tablet that is running ChromeOS.

The Last Time We Talk About Galaxy S9, For Now

We are just a few weeks out on the Galaxy S9 and it deserves all the hype it's getting. Samsung has finally begun to shape a formidable Android phone instead of just copying the latest Apple design and hoping for the best.

The last round of leaks is teetering closer to confirmed specs and it's getting exciting for the Galaxy S9 and S9+.

As VentureBeat reported previously, more than screen dimensions will separate the two models this year (the Galaxy S8 and S8+, in contrast, are nearly identical save for their Super AMOLED display diagonals). However, as this year is mostly a component upgrade following a comprehensive redesign in 2017, neither the 5.8-inch S9 nor the 6.2-inch S9+ will be significant departures from their predecessors.

Powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 in the U.S. and China, and Samsung’s own Exynos 9810 systems-on-chip in the rest of the world, the first differentiator between the S9 siblings lies in their memory configurations: 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage for the S9+, but the same 4GB/64GB pairing as the last generation for the standard S9. With this distribution of basic components, Samsung is making it more difficult for users, some of whom may even want a smaller screen, to choose the basic S9 without additional trade-offs.

The Galaxy S9+ adds a second 12-megapixel rear module, but this one has a standard fixed aperture. In what will be important to many, all of the phones’ rear elements are aligned vertically, instead of horizontally like the S8, with the fingerprint scanner located more naturally at the bottom of the stack. Around front, both 2018 S-series models sport 8-megapixel selfie cams. On the bottom, another welcome change: stereo speakers.

Expect the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ to begin shipping, and selling through retail, on March 16.